Hey not this year, but maybe, possibly in two or three years we could be actually talking like this could happen. It sure is a lot closer than when Helix released this four years ago.
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For certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair
Times sure have changed from the beer at the strip club days. Friday night last, or more technically Saturday morning, the LA Kings arrived at the North End Bar & Grill in Hermosa Beach, the same club that they celebrated their Stanley Cup victory 2-years ago, with the Cup in hand. As part of the evenings proceedings, they filled the bowl of the cup with M&M’s (Plain, Peanut and Peanut Butter).
Here’s the video:
As noted on these pages a few weeks ago, I was once in the middle of a riot. In 1981 Alice Cooper fans rioted when Cooper failed to show up for his show at the Canadian National Exhibition Grandstand. The cancellation was announced two hours after the scheduled show start.
Since writing about the riot it has stuck in my mind a little and some memories have popped up.
I was, for the record, 18, more than a little prone to dumbness and quite stoned. All the excuse I needed to act abhorrently. Surely I would have looted the joint if there was only a Starbucks at the CNE to loot. Except, that’s not what happened. While some tools were being, well tools, we ducked the mess. At one point a person fell while the police horses where slow walking us toward the gate, and we stopped and helped her up before continuing.
Because we were 18 and stoned was no reason to act stupid, and we didn’t.
So last night as I watched all those young men, most looking well past the age I was in 1981, I thought ‘no excuses’. They acted like self involved, uncivilized animals because that’s exactly what they are. There was a time when they shot looters and, watching on CTV last night, I couldn’t help feel it was high time that bit of policy was brought back into common use.
Speaking of CTV last night, their coverage of the Vancouver riot was outstanding. With a reporter and cameraman on the street, walking among the throng, they captured both the event, including shots of people committing criminal acts, and the mood. At times they had to move because things were getting tense exactly where they were.
I’ve long been a complainer about how bad the traditional media has become. Last night CTV proved how good they can be, how important to the reporting of the story it is to have somebody in the thick of things. It was truly compelling and excellent journalism.
So sad to hear the news that Pat Burns has lost his battle with cancer. The former police officer and three time NHL coach of the year died today at the too young age of 58.
For Leaf fans under 55, the greatest Leaf season had the hard nose father figure of Pat Burns behind the bench. Few doubt that wonderful year would have happened without him.
The Leafs may be hapless and cupless in the colour TV era, but Burns was neither, winning a cup with New Jersey in 2003. Burns career coaching record is 501-353 (plus a bunch of ties) a stunning .744 winning percentage.
RIP Pat Burns: one of the good ones.
My friend Jim Hillis runs The Hespeler Project. He has cross-posted stuff I post here before, and has requested original material from me. I finally got around to giving him something, Changing the Hespeler Hockey Guard:
Here in Hespeler, we have what is euphemistically called, a favourite son. Kirk Maltby’s name is on the Stanley Cup four times, he played over 1,000 NHL games, 908 of them a few hours up the road in Detroit. For all his success, Maltby summered in Hespeler, worked out in the off season at the local YMCA and brought the Stanley Cup to the local bar, where his, and it’s, picture proudly hang on the wall.
We love him for none of that.
In Hespeler, there is only one stat that truly counts: did you buy a house in Galt? He never did, so we hung his jersey up at the Hespeler arena and called him ours.
He has had a distinguished NHL career and, sadly, this week called it quits. Retired at 37.
In the last couple of years, Maltby’s Jersey has been joined on the rafters of the Hespeler arena by Tim Brent. Granted, there was a meeting of a committee to have Brent‘s jersey, “ripped down, run through the chipper and burned like an American flag at a commune,” when there was a rumour that Brent was looking at a Condo in Preston, but the mayor (unofficial) arrived with some Grand River Town Hall Lager and sober second thought was replaced with a darn good party.
Brent was, however, always a marginal interest. Playing in Anaheim, he was wasting his career playing games at midnight on Tuesdays. Hometown boy made good, yes, but if your not up to see him on TSN, what good does it do anyone?
With Maltby’s exit from the game and Brent joining the Toronto Maple Leafs, however, an opportunity has opened up. Brent scored the Leafs first goal of the season last week against Montreal at a time when almost all of Hespeler was still up to see it.
He scored his second goal against Ottawa Saturday night, again during waking hours, this time on the CBC. Hockey Night in Canada for God’s sake: Don Cherry almost mentioned him on Coach’s Corner and there was a rumour at the Townline Tim Horton’s on Sunday morning that Rick Mercer may have him on his show – although it was agreed all round that they probably shouldn’t run into Pushlinch lake naked, Pushlinch Lake being in Guelph rather than Hespeler.
Being a Maple Leaf, Brent could easily surpass Maltby as our local hero by winning a Stanley Cup with Toronto. While that sounds like a lot, let it be said that nobody is suggesting he win a show-offy four cups like Maltby, but a modest one.
A-HA! I can hear the cries of Montreal Canadian fans in Galt pouncing. The Leafs win four lousy games and your already planning the parade. Well, yea, actually:
Around the parking lot at Townline Tim Horton’s a few times, just until everybody gets an ice cap
Across Townline road to Ellis Road and down to the arena
Around the arena parking lot, and then to Cooper Street
Down Cooper to Guelph Ave
Along Guelph Avenue to Ernie’s where, the ice caps being almost finished, we can start having our picture taken drinking beer with the Stanley Cup.It may seem presumptuous, four games into the season. But us Hespelerites know the Leafs now have a secret weapon: A Hespeler Boy.
And no, we’re not opening the gates across the 401 that day. You guys get the Santa Claus Parade (official) and the Canada Day Parade and Fireworks: we get the Stanley Cup parades and picture day at Ernie’s with the cup.
All the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities
Joni Mitchell gave a rare interview last week with the LA Times:
We (Bob Dylan) and I are like night and day, he and I. Bob
is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is deception.
Oh, my! Tell us what you really think Joni.
She had more to say regarding Grace Slick and Janis Joplin being drunken tramps – they were “sleeping with their whole bands and falling down drunk” – and Madonna:
Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980. Madonna is like Nero; she marks the turning point.
Madonna as anti-Christ. There’s an argument I can get behind.
Other revelations in the Joni Mitchell interview:
The Red Hot Chilli Peppers are neither red, hot nor chilli peppers.
Jakob Dylan plagiarized his fathers last name.
The Led Zeppelin song Going to California, heretofore thought to be written about Joni Mitchel, was really written about That Girl Marlo Thomas.
The reason the Toronto Maple Leafs have not won a Stanley Cup in 40 years is that Joni Mitchell cursed them by writing about them in her song Raised on Robbery.
Jose Feliciano is the judge for the People Magazine’s most beautiful people.
Bob Dylan mumbles
Sandra Bullock has filed for divorce from her wayward husband, Jesse James. While Bullock was apparently devastated by revelations of James multiple affairs, she was equally appalled by a picture showing him in Nazi dress, using his finger to mock-up a Hitler moustache and giving a Nazi salute:
The photo shocked me and made me sad. This is not the man I married… anything Nazi…have no place in my life. And the man I married felt the same.
Am I the only person in this world who sees the iron cross that James uses as his business logo and thinks of the Nazi’s?
People Magazine came out with their 2010 Most Beautiful Woman issue for 2010, and the winner is… Julia Roberts?
Even in her prime 20 years ago I wouldn’t put Julia Roberts on my top 50 beautiful women list, a list that includes my wife, my neighbour and my singer. But in an edition of People Magazine that will heavily feature Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts will be on the cover as most beautiful? Absurd!
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